Chris Knox

Well, since we're all being so anal about the art and the craft, let me be the first to chime in and say that there is no such thing as a 'nice 8 X 10' when dealing with 35mm photography, in film or digital format.

When you get your photos developed, they come in 4X6 prints. These prints are in the correct aspect ratio (depending on the percentage of viewable area in your viewfinder) in relation to the negative painted or pixel colored when you snapped the picture. When you get these photos developed in 5X7 or 8X10 you are allowing the developer to recompose your shots by cropping your image to fit on the photo paper size that does not match the proportions of your framed image. Do you want someone else re framing the image you took the time to frame when you first took the picture? If you are enlarging your images, the only acceptable size to go to from 4X6 is to double both sides. That is to suggest 8X12, not 8X10. I would imagine that you all being Home Theater Forum enthusiasts would understand the importance of maintaining the original aspect ratio.

The answer to the question almost always resides within the person who asked the question to begin with. If you simply want to learn the basics of photography and do all of it in one summer and then leave it to the wind, digital photography is fine so long as it allows for manual adjustment of the shutter speed and aperture opening. If, however, you want to master the craft and understand the true beauty of 'painting with light' and get the best pictures possible, you'd be better suited to not touch a digital camera, ever.

Digital cameras have come a long way. They are very useful tools that many professional photographers use and probably feel they can never do without them. The digital media is easier to work with and a Godsend under some circumstances. However, There isn't a digital camera out there that can deliver the lush colors and vivid 'fifth-gear' saturation that a SLR camera can with the appropriate film loaded with a good photographer. Digital doesn't even come close. I should know, I have a Canon Eos1v and it's digital counterpart. I use them both and couldn't live without either. But I do not use them for the same things.

It's like the parable with the comparison of a vinyl album against CD. An album on a decent turntable and a new needle will walk all over any CD on the planet. The same is true of film against digital.


This is a huge mistake to assume this and it is also grossly inaccurate. Film is a direct impression left by the spectrum of light that comes directly from the original image stored on metal particles, a direct reflection of the image, if you will. Digital is a digital 'representation' of this image, much like a CD is a digital representation of the music as where an album is an exact cut of the music expressed in a smooth wavelength. The digital version is a series of points on a more jagged wavelength. It doesn't compare.

I'll load my Eos1v with Fuji Velvia 50 speed and shoot a colorful landscape that no digital camera can come within miles of touching. I'll load it with Kodachrome 64 and shoot an outdoor portrait of a woman's face and any digital camera owner on the planet would notice the quality gap in comparison. The fact of the matter is that digital cameras do not have the versatility of the world's richest films in various lighting conditions. And I've been proving my point time and time again to digital camera owners. The only REAL advantage a digital camera has is a marked convenience and absence of a lot of equipment to carry around. Contrast, sharpness, and image reproduction is far Superior with a SLR (single lens reflex) camera and a good quality film. Believe it.

No matter how many bits you throw into a CCD, you aren't going to make the two mediums identical, you are merely trading quality for convenience.

This is not to say that digital cameras produce bad images, for the most assuredly do not. They actually produce very nice images that are more than acceptable in today's media. My argument is that they are nowhere close to recreating the same quality that film has given us, something that is being touted here. A fantastic argument for digital cameras is also that they allow you the freedom to get the great shots because you can carry them around much easier than a boatload of SLR gear, and if you carry the camera more then you are more likely to get that great picture. There is indeed some merit to that argument.

Another thing that I hate is that because so many people are going for the quick and easy way to do things, everyone new to photography is using that MAX shit. What this means is that Kodak no longer makes Royal Gold 25 film because demand for it has slipped. It was arguably the best film in the world. Hell it's hard enough just trying to find Royal Gold 100 anymore. People, listen to me: The lower the number on the box the sharper and more vivid the final image. Stay away from 200 (because the difference in it and 400 is next to nothing, and only use 400 when it is dark out.

Is learning photography on an SLR expensive, yes, it can be, but it doesn't come close to what you shell out for your home theater. You will develop a feel for your particular camera early on and you will know how to push and pull (photo jargon) your images after a couple of rolls of shooting. The images you get in the end are indeed superior and anyone that tells you that digital is just as good is mistaken. For it is the FEEL of the finished image from an SLR that is Superior, you won't ever know what that FEEL is unless you've shot a few rolls and compared. I suggest you do just that.

Everyone has their personal favorites as far as film goes, but there is no question that the right film in the right shot on a decent SLR will always be Superior to digital.

Chris

Aaron Reynolds

Hey Chris, thanks for taking single, isolated quotes from my long, detailed post and trying to make me sound like I'm saying the opposite of what I'm saying. That's very polite of you.


I'm at a loss here -- I don't understand how the CCD's acceptance of an electrical charge is only a representation where the silver halide's acceptance of an electrical charge (which, to simplify, bonds it to the celluloid) is not.

Both are representations of the original, but, as I said in the post you quoted, digital, at this point, is storing significantly less information. I am not talking merely of resolution, but also tonal range. One of the biggest drawbacks to digital photography, for me, is the lack of tonal detail -- however, many people appreciate this unnatural "smoothness" of the image. It is also considered a positive thing in DVD transfers by many.

As to your anal 8x10 comment, I shoot 6x7. 8x10s are the correct ratio for this format. I also agree with the posts above suggesting moving to a cheap medium format system for better images (even a cheap system will give you fantastic results compared to your 35mm stuff).

The colour prints I make from my 6x7 transparencies are better than any that have been available in the past due to digital technology. I am not some hobbyist doing work in my basement darkroom -- I am on my fifteenth year in the photographic lab industry and on the fourth of owning my own lab. I have produced Cibachromes/Ilfochromes and also done a lot of work with medium and large format internegatives, but the prints I am making now are better.

I am using a Polaroid Sprintscan 120, creating a 500+ megabyte file from my 6x7 transparency. I use Photoshop for colour correction, resizing, and whatever cropping or other adjustment I require. Then I make a print on an Epson 2200. (Our larger work is on an Epson 7500, their older 24" archival printer, but the newer 2200 is significantly better.) The resulting prints are simply stunning, and are much, much better than the best Ilfochromes I have seen for a number of reasons. First, they are far more archival. Second, I have significantly more contrast control. Third, they are sharper, not because of artificial sharpening but because a number of diffusing optical surfaces (the most destructive one being the paper's surface layer) have been eliminated. If I am not careful, the images can be unnaturally sharp, and I, as a rule, add a minor amount of diffusion in Photoshop to make the final prints look more like a traditional Ilfochrome-style print.

The print is not lacking in tonal range in any way. It has more detail at both the high and low end of the spectrum than a traditional chemical print. It has more fine detail. It is superior in absolutely every way.

I cannot make a print this good from a digital camera file, but I do not doubt that one day I will be able to, because I am making this print from a digital file. One day, camera technology will catch up to scanner technology.

Of course, all of this is inconsequential to this thread, as Adam has stated his preference for film. Sorry for hijacking your thread, Adam, but I had to respond.


This I will heartily agree with, and I'll give you some more bad news: Fuji's Velvia 100F is hitting market shortly, doubtlessly to replace the slower 50 speed Velvia in the long term. And we've already lost Agfa Ultra 50, which is being replaced by Ultra 100. And I shed a number of tears for Agfapan APX 25 when it was canned.

MAX film is designed for lousy cameras that have poor automatic exposure systems in them -- MAX's whole point is to be able to give you a useable image no matter how badly you over or under expose it. Compare it to something like Fuji's NPS or NPC, films with virtually no exposure latitude, where a half stop in the wrong direction could be disastrous.

Now, high speed films have been getting better and better; I shot 40 rolls of NPZ (Fuji's pro 800 speed) in 120 format on my trip to Prague, and the 16x20s are fantastic. Would they be better if they were a slower film? Possibly. Certainly for bigger prints. But I would not have been able to shoot in the variety of conditions that were present.

Chris Knox

Sorry Aaron, I didn't mean to single you out in any way. I simply responded to the quote, not the person. I have heard it said too many times and I admit I cringe when I hear it. Please don't take it personally. I actually agreed with everything else that you mentioned.



Because it is the electrical charge in the digital camera that becomes the image (the presence and absence of the charge expressed digitally as zeroes and ones), in which the silver halides are simply bonded by the electrical charge. It's a difference between the electrical charge that adheres them and the electrical charge making up the image.



I agree 100%


Which is why in my opinion a movie theater image is far superior to a DVD image.


Which is why I specifically said:


And again, you are absolutely correct about the medium format comparison to 35mm. A bigger negative delivers a better image, of course. But since the topic was 35mm photography I decided not to include mention of my 'blad' camera. As a matter of fact I'll go you one better and say that medium format is immeasurably better than 35mm.


That's all well and good, but do you expect Adam to start up with all of that?


Doesn't that just make you want to puke???


True. Try shooting a canyon sunset at late dusk with 50-speed film (of course mounted on a tripod) with several half gray filters stacked in front of the lens to compensate for the differences in luminance in sky and canyon. I think the shutter was open for about three months...

Didn't mean to offend.

Aaron Reynolds

I don't see the difference. Aside from the lack of resolution as it pertains to both tonal variation and actual resolving power, please explain to me the actual difference in the generated image between these two methods of aquisition.


Agreed. That's why I don't own a DVD player.


No, I am merely explaining the actual, real-world experience behind my belief that it is not the method of capture that is causing the difference in image quality, but the actual, quantifiable quality difference between the methods: that film is better than digital, today, not because film is inherently better than digital but because film currently has much higher resolution than digital. When a digital camera can produce an image as good as I get from my scanner (which, admittedly, was close to $4000 when I bought it), then it will be, for all intents and purposes, as good as today's film. Now, since film is still evolving, unless the market shifts in such a way that it is no longer profitable to develop new film technologies, film will also be better than it is now.

But the day that digital cameras produce an image as good as my scanner is coming...just not this week.

I'm annoyed that digital camera resolution is completely measured in pixels-per-inch and not by the variation available in each pixel, which is of far greater importance to a true, photographic image. But hey, when it's a bigger number game, you measure things with the same number your competitor is using and make sure that yours has a few more.


What really kills me is that the only film that I've carried at the lab that I've had to drop because of poor sales was Ilford Pan-F 50.

I'm not really offended, I was just annoyed that the quote you used came from a paragraph making the same point that you did, but you used it as an launching point for your argument.

Shawn C

It seems to me that the writing is on the walls for film cameras. Digital cameras improve year by year and WILL surpass film quality eventually. CCD's WILL improve and new technologies will be developed. It's only a matter of time. For the kinds of pictures I take, vacations, baby pictures, you can't beat digital.

Taking "film" to Wal-Mart to get it "developed", hoping that your pictures turned out just seems too foreign and old-fashioned to me.

This sounds an awful lot like an "LP vs. CD" war.

Josh Lowe

I think it'll be quite a while until CCDs can surpass medium format and be within the realm of affordability. 35mm is one thing, MF is quite another.

Tom Meyer

Oh give me a break. It's rather ridiculous to say with such absolute certainty that there is an "OAR" to a 35mm frame. Professional photographers crop their images ALL the time, even images that they take considerable time to compose. And let's look at some image sizes (which I would assume to be true as to the size of the original print) from my "Ansel Adams at 100" book to see if they are exact multiples/fractions of the 8x10 negatives he used since we all know Ansel Adams would take days to frame a shot so he'd never have to crop any of his precious images:

5 1/2 x 7 1/4
5 3/4 x 7 1/8
5 15/16 x 7 1/8
5 5/8 x 7 3/8

Do any of those have the same AR as 8x10 ? Nope. Sorry.

And if the shot is something that was fleeting or difficult to follow, to say that I can't crop the photo because I couldn't, for example, frame a soaring golden eagle perfectly against the backdrop of Mt. Everest (as I did two months ago in Nepal) in order to make it look better is crazy and I'm going to do it whether or not I do it digitally, in a wet darkroom or pay a lab to do it for me. There is nothing wrong with doing so.

And if your "OAR" theory is true, why don't Kodak, Ilford, Oriental, et al make 8x12 or 16x24 paper instead of 8x10, 11x14 and 16x20 so that people can make borderless prints in the "correct" AR ?

JohnRice

Hey Adam.

Are you the same guy I've conversed with over at the Cinematography discussion?


I have plenty of things to say, but might save them for email or PM.


As far as books go, I'm not a big fan of getting all that much knowledge of photography from books. I think they are better to enhance the knowledge you get elsewhere. Photography is a hands on type of thing and I think it is best learned that way. Interaction with a reliable and knowledgable individual is paramount. Having said that, The Joy of Photography has long been regarded as probably the best all around source of general knowledge. The Adams books are excellent, but pretty advanced and basically require processing your own film.


On the digital vs. film front, digital has some obvious advantages in learning photography, but it is also sufficiently different from shooting film that there are plenty of disadvantages as well.

They flutter behind you, your possible pasts.
Some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost.

Chris Knox

If you'd bothered to read my post at all instead of just racing to the bottom as fast as you could just so you could post you would take note that I am referring to 35mm film and having someone else develop it for you.

If you are content to shoot 35mm photographic images and then take them to the processor and have some well-meaning hourly paid high school kid make you 8X10's, cropping a full 2 inches off of the image you so carefully framed, then that's your business. Personally, if there is any cropping of my image to be done, I'd rather do it myself.

So what I am saying is if you take photographs with your 35mm camera, and then take them to someone to get them processed (which most people do), and you want enlargements, and you want the final print to represent what you saw in the viewfinder and not be cropped, order 8X12's or a size that properly maintains the aspect ratio of the negative that you shot on. 8X10's are cropped a full 2 inches in respect to what you saw in the viewfinder.

I don't give a shit what Ansel Adams does. He obviously develops his own work. For me, I can frame my shot most of the time and snap the picture and I am done. If I need to photoshop the image and crop it after the fact I am fully capable of doing that as well. But I'll be damned if I'm going to allow another person to reframe my shots after the fact, would you?

Have I made it clear enough this time?